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November 24, 2012

That was the message that China sought to convey to President Barack Obama as he completed his eight-hour visit to Yangon (Rangoon) on November 19,2012, during which he met President TheinSein and Daw Aung San SuuKyi and addressed the students of the Rangoon University.

2. Ever since the US and Myanmar started moving closer to each other last year, the Chinese have been keeping a watchful eye on the interactions between the leaders of the two countries without any sign of undue panic that Myanmar was sought to be weaned away from China as part of the USA's new Asia policy.

3. President TheinSein too and his officers maintained regular military-to-military exchanges with China in order to reassure Beijing that opening-up to the US would not be at the expense of traditional close relations with China and that the Chinese military leadership should have no reason to fear any dilution of the strategic ties between the two countries, including the relations between the armed forces of thetwo countries. Before going to New York in September 2012 to attend the UN General Assembly session during which he met Mr.Obama, Mr.TheinSein took care to visit China.

4.On the day of Mr.Obama's visit to Yangon, the "China Daily" had carried an exclusive interview with Mr.KoKoHlaing, political adviser to President TheinSein, on Myanmar's relations with China.Mr.KoKoHlaing had visited China at the head of a non-governmental Myanmar delegation sometime before (date not specified) Mr.Obama's visit to Yangon, but the interview given by him was carried on the day of Mr.Obama's visit.

5.In this interview, the political adviser to Mr.TheinSein said that Myanmar cherished the "special" links with China since ancient times and would further strengthen and deepen its "time-honoured and time-tested" friendship during the country's current reforms.

6.Headded: "We were in isolation for many years and now are opening up, but it will not hamper the relationship between Myanmar and China. The bilateral relation is a special one.

" Myanmar was one of the first countries to establish diplomatic ties with New China in 1950. But the two countries' close relationship dates to centuries ago.The ancestors of people now living in both countries had referred to each other at one time as "paukphaw", a Myanmar word meaning brothers and sisters.

"The countries' relationship has remained strong in recent decades, especially during Myanmar's isolation, a time that it received much assistance from China. China is now the country's largest investor and trade partner.

"We need to keep cordial relations with all nations.China is our most important neighbour. We will never forget that."

7.Commenting on Mr.Obama's visit a day after the visit, the "Global Times", a sister publication of the party-owned "People's Daily", said as follows: " Some have suggested that Obama's visit was aimed at weakening China's influence. Such assumptions regarding contests between great powers and the political changes in Myanmar over the past year added special meaning to Obama's visit.

"China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn't express any displeasure with the visit, but said it believed that Sino-Myanmar relations would deepen. This shouldn't simply be dismissed as diplomatic-speak, but shows China's confidence.

"Myanmar's democratic reforms and opening up to the West not only satisfy Washington but are also in China's long-term interests. Most ASEAN countries have democratic elections and relations with China are not hindered due to differences in political systems. Myanmar won't become alienated from China simply because of domestic political adjustments.

"Myanmar's opening-up was unavoidable. Sino-Myanmar relations must undergo some changes to adapt to this. But the changes will be limited.

"There is no possibility that bilateral relations will be overturned entirely. China is the biggest neighbouring country of Myanmar and has irreplaceable influences on it. More importantly, such influences are based on equality.

"Myanmar is becoming open to the West in order to maximize its national interests. But it's unwise to replace China with the West. Both the current leadership of Myanmar and opposition leader Aung San SuuKyi well know this.

"That said, Obama's visit may still have an eye toward challenging China's influence. But the actual effect will be difficult to tell. Obama likes to be applauded for his efforts in promoting democracy in Myanmar and this merits some reward. However, the US can't squeeze China out of Myanmar.

"Economically, Southeast Asian countries are depending on China more than the US, and this tendency is on the increase. Obama is bringing $170 million in aid to Myanmar. Unless he can ensure aid is delivered to Myanmar every month, such small amount of money won't be a significant bargaining chip to change the China-Myanmar relationship.

"China needs to adjust to the US's increasing diplomatic actions in the region, but it doesn't have to overreact. China's fast economic growth and growing domestic market will translate into a stronger economic driving force in the region. This is the biggest leverage China has in diplomacy in Southeast Asia."

8.While commenting on the visit, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman HuaChunying said: "President Obama's visit is a matter between the United States and Myanmar. China and Myanmar are friendly neighbours, who, on the basis of the five principles of peaceful coexistence, conducted substantial cooperation in the spirit of equality and reciprocity, and they have also promoted their strategic partnership of cooperation.The development of China-Myanmar relations benefits the two peoples, and contributes to regional peace, stability and prosperity. We are confident in the in-depth development of bilateral relations."

9. The privately-owned "Irrawaddy Journal" of Myanmar reported that in the week prior to Mr.Obama's visit , two Myanmar delegations travelled to China to strengthen old military and cultural ties.

10.AMyanmar military delegation headed by Tatmadaw (armed forces) Deputy Commander-in-Chief Gen Soe Win visited China's largest bi-annual defense exhibition in the southern Chinese coastal city of Zhuhai on November 13, according to photos circulated on Chinese microblogs.

11.According to the Journal, the images showed a delegation with at least three general-ranked officers touring the Ninth China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition. Chinese state media has not identified Soe Win and other members of the delegation as visitors to the armaments trade fair. Similarly, no Myanmar visitors were mentioned in a detailed list of foreign dignitaries released by the organizers at the last Zhuhai Airshow in 2010.

12.Two reporters for the "Global Times" reported in a blog post that the Myanmar delegation "paid careful attention to the C802/C705/ FL-3000N defense missile system".The short-range surface-to-air missile launcher for ships, first revealed at the same airshow in 2008, has since been employed on China's first aircraft carrier.

13.On November 14, Soe Win met Gen Ma Xiaotian, Commander of the People's Liberation Army Air Force, at his headquarters in Beijing. Both sides expressed their wish to deepen cooperation in air force technology and training, according to a statement by the Chinese Ministry of Defense.

14. According to "The Irrawaddy Journal", Ma, 63, last visited the Burmese capital Naypyidaw in September, then as a Deputy Chief of Staff, where he held talks with incoming Vice-President NyanTun, a former Navy chief, and Commander-in-Chief Vice--Gen Min AungHlaing.

15.Ma, a long-time rising star within the Chinese armed forces, assumed command of the Chinese Air Force in October. The day before meeting Soe Win, Ma was elevated to the Chinese Communist Party's all-powerful Central Military Commission.

16. On November 15, the Myanmar delegation met with new Vice-Chief of Staff Lieut-Gen Qi Jiangu, and the outgoing Minister of Defense Gen Liang Guanglie. Thereafter, it travelled to Xi'an, a hub for military aviation, where they were received by Maj-Gen Lin Miaoxin, political commissar of the Shaanxi military district, according to a report in the local Shaanxi Daily newspaper.

17.The military delegation returned to Naypyidaw on November 19, hours after President TheinSein and Aung San SuuKyi had met with Mr. Obama. On the same day, former Brig-Gen Aye MyintKyu was in Beijing on his first trip as Minister of Culture.

18. He discussed arrangements for the 2013 Southeast Asian Games to be hosted by Myanmar in December next year with his Chinese counterpart Cai Wu. In September, both countries had reached an undisclosed framework agreement on "assistance and support" for the opening and closing ceremonies through the China Arts and Entertainment Group Ltd., a state-owned organizer of cultural events.Aye MyintKyu then met Politburo member Liu Yandong at Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party leadership, along with Li Peng, the head of China's General Administration of Sport.

19. On November 20,"The PLA Daily" quoted Liang Guanglie as having told Gen.Soe Win as follows: "The Chinese side attaches great importance to the relations between the Chinese and Myanmar militaries, and is willing to make joint efforts with the Myanmar side to effectively strengthen strategic communication, constantly deepen pragmatic cooperation, strive to maintain the stability of the border areas, and further promote China-Myanmar comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, so as to make contributions to maintaining regional peace and stability and promoting common development."

20. The PLA Daily quoted Gen.Soe Win as replying that

China has always been a reliable good brother, good friend and good partner of Myanmar. Under the new international and regional situations, the Myanmar side will keep devoting itself to strengthening the friendly exchanges and pragmatic cooperation between the two countries and the two militaries, so as to firmly safeguard common interests of the two countries.

21.According to the PLA Daily, Gen.QiJiangu told Gen.SoeWin as follows: "The China-Myanmar relations have withstood tests from the changeable international situations in the past 60-odd years since the establishment of the diplomatic relations, and the long-term mutual understanding and mutual support between the two countries have achieved fruitful accomplishments.The relations between the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Myanmar Armed Forces are an important component in the relations between the two countries. The Chinese PLA and the Myanmar Armed Forces have conducted in-depth and pragmatic communications in terms of high-level exchange of visits, equipment technological cooperation, personnel training, border control and so on, which have exerted active effects in promoting the comprehensive development of the relations between the two countries."( 24-11-12)

As President Barack Obama ended his whirlwind media-saturated trip to Southeast Asia, skeptics wonder if the much-discussed American 'pivot to Asia' is not just a show. The fact that he had to spend a good part of his limited time with the media answering questions about Gaza demonstrated the inescapable pull of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Then, there is the worry about America`s high deficit and inevitable cut in defence spending. What can the US, with its dwindling power, do in Asia to balance a rising China, critics ask. The limits of America's power were indeed visible despite the pomp and ceremony of the presidential visit. But for all the obvious constraints faced by the US in reasserting its presence, it would be a mistake to treat the Obama policy as empty.

Right from 2009, the Obama administration has tried to refocus American attention away from Iraq and Afghanistan to the populous and fast growing Asia Pacific. After a long review of its policy options, the US decided to repair the damage to its stature caused in part by its neglect of the region. It concluded that denouncing regimes friendly to China without any carrots was counterproductive.

In October, 2009, senior State Department official Kurt Campbell travelled to isolated Burma, meeting both military leaders and Aung San Suu Kyi. In a series of quiet meetings, the foundations were laid for slowly reforming Burma with concurrent lifting of sanctions. Meanwhile, the military junta, as revealed in their secret study brought to light by journalist Bertil Lintner, had concluded on its own that having China as a diplomatic ally and economic patron threatened the country's independence. Improving relations with the US by introducing political reform would be a recommended course.

Limited parliamentary elections in 2010 and the release of political prisoners including Suu Kyi paved the way for rapprochement with Washington. Suspending a $3.6 billion Chinese hydro-electric project that was facing strong popular opposition and allowing protest against Chinese copper mining also signalled the seriousness of its intent. The visit last year by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — and now the first ever visit by a US president along with a grant of economic aid — marks the return of the US to challenge Chinese domination.

Obama`s next stop, Cambodia, showed the seriousness of the competition for influence. Ironically, in 1984 when the current prime minister Hun Sen was the country`s foreign minister, the ministry published a book titled `Chinese Rulers` Crimes Against Kampuchea`. It elaborated Beijing`s role in propping up the murderous Khmer Rouge responsible for the death of some 1.7 million people. But thanks to China`s smart diplomacy and generous aid ($2.1 billion since 1992), growing private investment and trade, it has now emerged as the most influential presence in Cambodia. It came as no surprise that Hun Sen, as the host chairman of the ASEAN summit, cut off discussion of China`s assertive role in the South China Sea region by claiming, falsely, that southeast Asian countries had reached a "consensus" that they would not "internationalise" the South China Sea issue.

Ever since 2010 when Hillary Clinton asserted US interest in a peaceful resolution of the South China Sea dispute, an angry Beijing has sought to exclude the US from any discussion on the issue. Cambodia also chafes at strong criticism of its human rights record from Washington, some of which was delivered personally by a stern Obama in a private meeting that officials described as "tense". Yet, to keep a foot in the door, the US defence department has initiated a counter-terrorism training programme in Cambodia. It also has $70 million worth of aid programmes in health, education, governance, and economic growth. Given the growing popular anger at official corruption and the brutality of the regime in Cambodia, the US bets that in the long run, keeping pressure on Phnom Penh may bring benefit.

The enduring impact of American democracy's soft power was visible in Rangoon with tens of thousands of ecstatic Burmese greeting Obama. A carefully balanced policy that reasserts US interest in the region without forcing the people there into a choice of "with us or against us" will, in the long run, create a balance that would have been impossible had Washington turned its back on Asia.

With Washington skepticism near an all time high, it's no surprise that the Obama administration's recent travels have the town's talking heads buzzing. After all, just as Congress convenes hearings on the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack, it seems everyone who's anyone is jetting off to Asia.

And yet, to paraphrase that shrewd war correspondent Sigmund Freud, sometimes a ministerial visit is just a ministerial visit -- even if it does take the president plus his secretaries of State and Defense halfway around the world the very same week Congress was clamoring for their attendance.

The attraction in Asia is two-fold: AUSMIN -- the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (and for the record, 2012 marks the second straight Australian session to command the presence of both Secretaries Hilary Clinton and Leon Panetta) -- followed by the ASEAN Summit, with a precedential presidential visit to Burma sandwiched in between. All of which underscores the Pacific Pivot announced to great fanfare by President Obama a year ago.

But alongside America's Pacific Pivot comes the other piece of the Pacific picture: Asia's own pivot -- away from China. This is not a case of breaking from security relationships involving the PRC -- whose closest allies in the region remain North Korea's Kim Jung-un and Cambodian strong man Hun Sen, now that Myanmar's dictatorship has given way to Burma's fledgling democracy -- but rather a repositioning of commercial relationships that have grown with China's rise into economic dependencies creating varying degrees of discomfort on the part of China's regional neighbors.

Consider Japan, caught now in a replay of the 2010 tug-of-war over a string of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea, and the rights to the seabed resources surrounding them. Resource-poor and dependent on China's willingness to export critical metals, Japan recalls all too well the de facto rare earths embargo of late 2010. Japan undertook then to loosen its resource ties to China; today, the pace is accelerating. In the past month alone, Japan's Toyota Tsusho purchased 49 percent ownership of a Canadian rare earths deposit, Sumitomo Corp. partnered with Kazakhstan's Kazatomprom to extract rare earths from uranium waste tailings and Japan's foreign minister hosted his Turkmen counterpart in Tokyo, unveiling a development package to the five resource-rich former Soviet Central Asian Republics. With these overtures in play, Japan's trade minister announced this week Japan's intent to cut its near-total dependence on Chinese rare earths to 50 percent by mid-2013.

In South Korea, where the government's stockpile of rare earth elements is a scant 19-day supply, KORES -- Korea's state-run resource corporation -- has partnered with a South African rare earths miner. The move is just one step in an $8 billion effort to establish strategic stockpiles involving a range of metals for which China is currently a leading supplier.

The same quest for strategic distance drives the Philippines and Vietnam, fearful of China's expansive claims to 90 percent of the South China Sea. Each nation is looking for buffers against Chinese power, including the prospect of a stronger relationship with the United States. In the Philippines, this takes the form of a new appreciation for the 60-year old Mutual Defense Treaty. For those who recall the divisive days of the Vietnam War, there is no stronger sign of the potential sea change than Secretary Panetta's discussions concerning a potential U.S. naval basing arrangement during his June visit to Cam Ranh Bay.

The reset radiates even beyond the Pacific, out toward the Indian Ocean. Indeed, Secretary Clinton took her first opportunity on Australian soil to encourage her hosts to conduct joint naval exercises with India. For its part, the U.S. Navy is strengthening its own Indian Ocean presence, joining forces with the Netherlands and six African nations in the just-completed Cutlass Express naval exercise, operating out of Djibouti -- where a squadron of the U.S. JSOC drone fleet can be seen sitting on the tarmac in full view of the civilian side of Djibouti International Airport.

Draw a line from Djibouti on the Indian Ocean's western shore to Australia's HMAS Sterling naval base at Perth on the east, and the midway point runs past the UK's Diego Garcia base -- long a prominent port for U.S. Navy vessels. What with China winning approval from the UN's International Seabed Authority to commence exploration for seabed metals, the Indian Ocean is getting to be crowded.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, far from the formal dinners and Sherpa sessions of AUSMIN, the American political class jaws over the looming "fiscal cliff," and the risk of a defense sequester that would bone-saw fully half of all funding cuts from military budgets.

A dozen Asian nations will be watching closely, to see whether November's diplomatic demarche will be followed by a sustained commitment to the power projection necessary to make the promised Pacific pivot a reality.

Daniel McGroarty, principal of Carmot Strategic Group, an issues management firm in Washington, D.C., served in senior positions in the White House and at the Department of Defense.

November 23, 2012

Bill BonnerIn the case of Egypt, people listened and obeyed — at least, as much as they did — because Pharaoh was, in theory, a god. In the case of Rome — with the exception of Caligula's claims — and the Mongol empires, the theory was similarly simple, though different. Tamerlane made no claim to divinity. He merely made it clear what he would do to you if you resisted him. Towns that submitted were generally governed passably, according to the standards of the day...and taxed, but not razed to the ground. Those that contested his authority were destroyed, often with all the inhabitants killed.

Everybody — or everyone who isn't either feebleminded or a saint — wants wealth, power and status. And the easiest, fastest way to get it usually is to take it away from someone. That is government's role.

In Rome and out on the steppes, those who controlled the 'government' were in the favored position. They could reach out and impose their will on those who were not favored. Which is exactly what they did. As long as they were able, the insiders took from the outsiders. In both cases, the outsiders were literally outside the ruling group and its homeland.

This is perhaps a good place to point out that government is a phenomenon, not a system. It is best understood as a fight between the outsiders and the insiders. The insiders always control the government...and use it to conquer and control the outsiders. Why do they want to do so? The usual reasons. Wealth. Power. Status.

Everybody — or everyone who isn't either feebleminded or a saint — wants wealth, power and status. And the easiest, fastest way to get it usually is to take it away from someone. That is government's role. Only government can take something away from someone else lawfully. Why? Because governments make the laws.

We've already seen how a small group of Romans were able to reach beyond their home town, for nearly 1,000 years, taking wealth from people on the outside. One tribe fell under their control. Then another. Then, one town. And another. And always the power, prestige and wealth flowed back to Rome.

But not all Romans benefited in the same way. Rome itself was divided. During the Republican period, the insiders were the leading families who controlled the Senate. Then came the dictators, the emperors, and the scalawags who were able to get control of the government. Often, they were military men, popular or cunning generals who rose through the ranks, murdered their rivals, and took the reins of power for themselves. Each brought in new insiders...and kicked out some of the old ones. Rome sizzled with intrigue...and sometimes erupted into open warfare, with one group of insiders battling it out with another.

After Rome fell, barbarian tribes swept over Europe. Local strongmen were able to set up their own governments. There was little theory or justification involved. They used brute force to take what they wanted. Then they settled down to govern. One local lord provided protection from other local lords. All demanded payment, tribute, wealth and power. In the largely un-moneyed economies of the Dark Ages, taxes were in the form of a share of output...and/or days of labor. A serf typically worked one day in 10 for his lord and master.

In the fixed order of the world, each person had a job to do. One was a hewer of wood. Another was a drawer of water. A third was a king. Each man did his duty.

The local warlord and his entourage were the insiders. They took from the outsiders as much as they could get away with. Or as much as they thought it prudent to demand. Some even asserted a droit du seigneur, known in France by the more carnal expression "the right to the thigh." The local chief demanded the right to deflower the brides of his peasants. Even as recently as the beginning of the last century, Kurdish chieftains claimed the right to bed Armenian brides on their wedding night.

As the Dark Ages progressed, government became less locally peculiar. Across Europe, serfs, lords, and vassals knit themselves together into the feudal system. One governed a small area and was in turn governed by another, who governed a bigger one. At the top was the king, who owed his allegiance to God himself.

Justifying and explaining the phenomenon of government also evolved. How to make sense of it? Why was one man powerful and rich and another weak and poor? Europe was Christianized by then. All men were supposed to be equal in God's eyes. How come they were so different in the eyes of each other?

Reaching back into antiquity, the doctrine of the "Divine Right of Kings" was developed to explain it. Scholars did not maintain that kings were divine, because that would undermine the foundations of Judeo-Christian monotheism. Instead, they claimed that kings had a special role to play, that they were appointed...and anointed, by God (through his ministers in the church of St. Peter)...to rule. Some people thought the kings were descended directly from the line of Jesus Christ. Others thought that God gave kings a "divine" right to govern in His name.

In the fixed order of the world, each person had a job to do. One was a hewer of wood. Another was a drawer of water. A third was a king. Each man did his duty.

Scholars in the middle ages spent a lot of time on the issue. As a theory of government it seemed coherent and logical. But there were traps and dead ends in it. If the right to rule were given by God, man could not contradict Him. But men did. One divinely-appointed ruler met another divinely-appointed ruler on the field of battle. Only one could win. What kind of game was God playing?

And if God granted a man the right to rule other men, did that mean that every order he gave must be obeyed, just as though it had come from the mouth of God himself? And what if the king seemed not to be doing God's work at all? Adultery was clearly a no-no. God disapproved of it. But kings often made it a habit and a sport. Did not the king defile his body and betray his Lord? In an effort to explain away the problem, scholars put forth the idea that the king actually had two bodies. One sacred. One profane.

"The Divine Right of Kings" was a theory of government that held water. But you had to put the water in the right container. You had to believe in God. You had to believe that He gave out job assignments. You also had to believe that He didn't mind when His employees and agents made a mess of things...or even when they contradicted His own orders. Looking at the history of the monarchs who were thought to have been given this divine authority, you would have to conclude that God was either a very tolerant task-master, or a very negligent one. Adultery, murder, thieving, lying — there was hardly one of God's commandments they obeyed.

As a theory of government, the 'divine right of kings' would have been okay had it not been for the kings themselves. Some were reasonable men. Others were tyrants. Many were incompetent, largely irrelevant and silly. Taken all together, it was very difficult to believe that they had been selected by God, without also believing that God was just choosing His most important managers at random. Kings were not especially smart. Not especially bold or especially timid. Not especially wise or stupid. For all intents and purposes, they were just like everyone else. Sometimes smart. Sometimes dumb. Sometimes good. Sometimes evil. And always subject to influence.

Towards the end of the 18th century, the 'divine right of kings' lost its following. The church, the monarch and the feudal system all seemed to lose market share. The Enlightenment had made people begin to wonder. Then, the beginning of the "Industrial Revolution" made them stir.

When the point of diminishing returns is passed, the payoff from further investment of resources in policing and wealth re-distribution declines. Then what happens?

In 1776, Adam Smith published his "Wealth of Nations," arguing that commerce and production were the source of wealth. Government began to seem like an obstruction and a largely unnecessary cost. Its beneficial role was limited, said Smith, to enforcing contracts and protecting property.

The school of laissez-faire economics maintained that government was a "necessary evil," to be restrained as much as possible. The "government that governs best," as Jefferson put it, "is the one that governs least." This is, of course, another way of saying that government — like every other natural phenomenon — is subject to the law of declining marginal utility. A little government is probably a good thing. The energy put into a system of public order, dispute resolution, and certain minimal public services may give a positive return on investment. But the point of diminishing returns is reached quickly. For reference, here is the 'take' by modern governments today.

Government — according the Liberal philosophers of the 18th and 19th century was supposed to get out of the way so that the 'invisible hand' would guide men to productive, fruitful lives. Smith thought the arm attached to the invisible hand was the arm of God. Others believed that not even God was necessary. Men, without central planning or God to guide them, would create a 'spontaneous order,' which would be a lot nicer than the one created by kings, dictators or popular assemblies.

This idea of government, such as it is, leads to what we know of today as "libertarianism." Libertarians argue about how much authority the government should have. They scrap among themselves over what the government should do and how big it should be allowed to get. But all libertarians agree with Jefferson. And all agree that the governments in the world circa 2011 are much too big.

The libertarians are concerned about their loss of freedom. But what we're concerned about is the downside. When the point of diminishing returns is passed, the payoff from further investment of resources in policing and wealth re-distribution declines. Then what happens? We've already seen what happened to Germany in the '30s and '40s. Hitler was elected. But then, the Reichstag burned and he suspended democratic institutions. Perhaps more robust, modern democracies can adapt more readily and thereby avoid the downside?

The term "New Middle East" was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the "Greater Middle East."

This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean. The term and conceptualization of the "New Middle East," was subsequently heralded by the U.S. Secretary of State and the Israeli Prime Minister at the height of the Anglo-American sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon. Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary Rice had informed the international media that a project for a "New Middle East" was being launched from Lebanon.

This announcement was a confirmation of an Anglo-American-Israeli "military roadmap" in the Middle East. This project, which has been in the planning stages for several years, consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

The "New Middle East" project was introduced publicly by Washington and Tel Aviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of "constructive chaos." This "constructive chaos" –which generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region– would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel could redraw the map of the Middle East in accordance with their geo-strategic needs and objectives.

New Middle East Map

Secretary Condoleezza Rice stated during a press conference that "[w]hat we're seeing here [in regards to the destruction of Lebanon and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon], in a sense, is the growing—the 'birth pangs'—of a 'New Middle East' and whatever we do we [meaning the United States] have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the New Middle East [and] not going back to the old one."1Secretary Rice was immediately criticized for her statements both within Lebanon and internationally for expressing indifference to the suffering of an entire nation, which was being bombed indiscriminately by the Israeli Air Force.

The Anglo-American Military Roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's speech on the "New Middle East" had set the stage. The Israeli attacks on Lebanon –which had been fully endorsed by Washington and London– have further compromised and validated the existence of the geo-strategic objectives of the United States, Britain, and Israel. According to Professor Mark Levine the "neo-liberal globalizers and neo-conservatives, and ultimately the Bush Administration, would latch on to creative destruction as a way of describing the process by which they hoped to create their new world orders," and that "creative destruction [in] the United States was, in the words of neo-conservative philosopher and Bush adviser Michael Ledeen, 'an awesome revolutionary force' for (…) creative destruction…"2

Anglo-American occupied Iraq, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan, seems to be the preparatory ground for the balkanization (division) and finlandization (pacification) of the Middle East. Already the legislative framework, under the Iraqi Parliament and the name of Iraqi federalization, for the partition of Iraq into three portions is being drawn out. (See map below)

Moreover, the Anglo-American military roadmap appears to be vying an entry into Central Asia via the Middle East. The Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are stepping stones for extending U.S. influence into the former Soviet Union and the ex-Soviet Republics of Central Asia. The Middle East is to some extent the southern tier of Central Asia. Central Asia in turn is also termed as "Russia's Southern Tier" or the Russian "Near Abroad."

Many Russian and Central Asian scholars, military planners, strategists, security advisors, economists, and politicians consider Central Asia ("Russia's Southern Tier") to be the vulnerable and "soft under-belly" of the Russian Federation.3

It should be noted that in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. National Security Advisor, alluded to the modern Middle East as a control lever of an area he, Brzezinski, calls the Eurasian Balkans. The Eurasian Balkans consists of the Caucasus (Georgia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan) and to some extent both Iran and Turkey. Iran and Turkey both form the northernmost tiers of the Middle East (excluding the Caucasus4) that edge into Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The Map of the "New Middle East"

A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic, governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It has been causally allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the "New Middle East."

MAP OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST

Note: The following map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO's Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles.

This map of the "New Middle East" seems to be based on several other maps, including older maps of potential boundaries in the Middle East extending back to the era of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and World War I. This map is showcased and presented as the brainchild of retired Lieutenant-Colonel (U.S. Army) Ralph Peters, who believes the redesigned borders contained in the map will fundamentally solve the problems of the contemporary Middle East.

The map of the "New Middle East" was a key element in the retired Lieutenant-Colonel's book, Never Quit the Fight, which was released to the public on July 10, 2006. This map of a redrawn Middle East was also published, under the title of Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look, in the U.S. military's Armed Forces Journal with commentary from Ralph Peters.5

It should be noted that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon's foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.

It has been written that Ralph Peters' "four previous books on strategy have been highly influential in government and military circles," but one can be pardoned for asking if in fact quite the opposite could be taking place. Could it be Lieutenant-Colonel Peters is revealing and putting forward what Washington D.C. and its strategic planners have anticipated for the Middle East?

The concept of a redrawn Middle East has been presented as a "humanitarian" and "righteous" arrangement that would benefit the people(s) of the Middle East and its peripheral regions. According to Ralph Peter's:

International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.

The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa's borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.

While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region's comprehensive failure isn't Islam, but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.

Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried. Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant "cheated" population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia [Muslims], but still fail to account adequately for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.

Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.

Even those who abhor the topic of altering borders would be well-served to engage in an exercise that attempts to conceive a fairer, if still imperfect, amendment of national boundaries between the Bosphorus and the Indus. Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East's "organic" frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected. 6

(emphasis added)

"Necessary Pain"

Besides believing that there is "cultural stagnation" in the Middle East, it must be noted that Ralph Peters admits that his propositions are "draconian" in nature, but he insists that they are necessary pains for the people of the Middle East. This view of necessary pain and suffering is in startling parallel to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's belief that the devastation of Lebanon by the Israeli military was a necessary pain or "birth pang" in order to create the "New Middle East" that Washington, London, and Tel Aviv envision.

Moreover, it is worth noting that the subject of the Armenian Genocide is being politicized and stimulated in Europe to offend Turkey.7

The overhaul, dismantlement, and reassembly of the nation-states of the Middle East have been packaged as a solution to the hostilities in the Middle East, but this is categorically misleading, false, and fictitious. The advocates of a "New Middle East" and redrawn boundaries in the region avoid and fail to candidly depict the roots of the problems and conflicts in the contemporary Middle East. What the media does not acknowledge is the fact that almost all major conflicts afflicting the Middle East are the consequence of overlapping Anglo-American-Israeli agendas.

Many of the problems affecting the contemporary Middle East are the result of the deliberate aggravation of pre-existing regional tensions. Sectarian division, ethnic tension and internal violence have been traditionally exploited by the United States and Britain in various parts of the globe including Africa, Latin America, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Iraq is just one of many examples of the Anglo-American strategy of "divide and conquer." Other examples are Rwanda, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan.

Amongst the problems in the contemporary Middle East is the lack of genuine democracy which U.S. and British foreign policy has actually been deliberately obstructing. Western-style "Democracy" has been a requirement only for those Middle Eastern states which do not conform to Washington's political demands. Invariably, it constitutes a pretext for confrontation. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are examples of undemocratic states that the United States has no problems with because they are firmly alligned within the Anglo-American orbit or sphere.

Additionally, the United States has deliberately blocked or displaced genuine democratic movements in the Middle East from Iran in 1953 (where a U.S./U.K. sponsored coup was staged against the democratic government of Prime Minister Mossadegh) to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, the Arab Sheikdoms, and Jordan where the Anglo-American alliance supports military control, absolutists, and dictators in one form or another. The latest example of this is Palestine.

The Turkish Protest at NATO's Military College in Rome

Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters' map of the "New Middle East" has sparked angry reactions in Turkey. According to Turkish press releases on September 15, 2006 the map of the "New Middle East" was displayed in NATO's Military College in Rome, Italy. It was additionally reported that Turkish officers were immediately outraged by the presentation of a portioned and segmented Turkey.8 The map received some form of approval from the U.S. National War Academy before it was unveiled in front of NATO officers in Rome.

The Turkish Chief of Staff, General Buyukanit, contacted the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, and protested the event and the exhibition of the redrawn map of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.9 Furthermore the Pentagon has gone out of its way to assure Turkey that the map does not reflect official U.S. policy and objectives in the region, but this seems to be conflicting with Anglo-American actions in the Middle East and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

Is there a Connection between Zbigniew Brzezinski's "Eurasian Balkans" and the "New Middle East" Project?

The following are important excerpts and passages from former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives. Brzezinski also states that both Turkey and Iran, the two most powerful states of the "Eurasian Balkans," located on its southern tier, are "potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts [balkanization]," and that, "If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable."10

It seems that a divided and balkanized Iraq would be the best means of accomplishing this. Taking what we know from the White House's own admissions; there is a belief that "creative destruction and chaos" in the Middle East are beneficial assets to reshaping the Middle East, creating the "New Middle East," and furthering the Anglo-American roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia:

In Europe, the Word "Balkans" conjures up images of ethnic conflicts and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its "Balkans," but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more religiously and ethnically heterogenous. They are located within that large geographic oblong that demarcates the central zone of global instability (…) that embraces portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia [Pakistan, Kashmir, Western India], the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.

The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong (…) they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way: they are a power vacuum.Although most of the states located in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East are also unstable, American power is that region's [meaning the Middle East's] ultimate arbiter. The unstable region in the outer zone is thus an area of single power hegemony and is tempered by that hegemony. In contrast, the Eurasian Balkans are truly reminiscent of the older, more familiar Balkans of southeastern Europe: not only are its political entities unstable but they tempt and invite the intrusion of more powerful neighbors, each of whom is determined to oppose the region's domination by another. It is this familiar combination of a power vacuum and power suction that justifies the appellation "Eurasian Balkans."

The traditional Balkans represented a potential geopolitical prize in the struggle for European supremacy. The Eurasian Balkans, astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly Eurasia's richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities, are also geopolitically significant. Moreover, they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.

The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.

Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel international rivalries.The situation is made all the more volatile by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also internally unstable.

The Eurasian Balkans include nine countries that one way or another fit the foregoing description, with two others as potential candidates. The nine are Kazakstan [alternative and official spelling of Kazakhstan] , Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia—all of them formerly part of the defunct Soviet Union—as well as Afghanistan.

The potential additions to the list are Turkey and Iran, both of them much more politically and economically viable, both active contestants for regional influence within the Eurasian Balkans, and thus both significant geo-strategic players in the region. At the same time, both are potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts. If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable, while efforts to restrain regional domination by Russia could even become futile. 11

(emphasis added)

Redrawing the Middle East

The Middle East, in some regards, is a striking parallel to the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe during the years leading up the First World War. In the wake of the the First World War the borders of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe were redrawn. This region experienced a period of upheaval, violence and conflict, before and after World War I, which was the direct result of foreign economic interests and interference.

The reasons behind the First World War are more sinister than the standard school-book explanation, the assassination of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. Economic factors were the real motivation for the large-scale war in 1914.

Norman Dodd, a former Wall Street banker and investigator for the U.S. Congress, who examined U.S. tax-exempt foundations, confirmed in a 1982 interview that those powerful individuals who from behind the scenes controlled the finances, policies, and government of the United States had in fact also planned U.S. involvement in a war, which would contribute to entrenching their grip on power.

The following testimonial is from the transcript of Norman Dodd's interview with G. Edward Griffin;

We are now at the year 1908, which was the year that the Carnegie Foundation began operations. And, in that year, the trustees meeting, for the first time, raised a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year, in a very learned fashion. And the question is this: Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people? And they conclude that, no more effective means to that end is known to humanity, than war. So then, in 1909, they raise the second question, and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war?

Well, I doubt, at that time, if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country [the United States], than its involvement in a war. There were intermittent shows [wars] in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans were. And finally, they answer that question as follows: we must control the State Department.

And then, that very naturally raises the question of how do we do that? They answer it by saying, we must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country and, finally, they resolve to aim at that as an objective. Then, time passes, and we are eventually in a war, which would be World War I. At that time, they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly. And finally, of course, the war is over.

At that time, their interest shifts over to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914, when World War I broke out.

(emphasis added)

The redrawing and partition of the Middle East from the Eastern Mediterranean shores of Lebanon and Syria to Anatolia (Asia Minor), Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and the Iranian Plateau responds to broad economic, strategic and military objectives, which are part of a longstanding Anglo-American and Israeli agenda in the region.

The Middle East has been conditioned by outside forces into a powder keg that is ready to explode with the right trigger, possibly the launching of Anglo-American and/or Israeli air raids against Iran and Syria. A wider war in the Middle East could result in redrawn borders that are strategically advantageous to Anglo-American interests and Israel.

NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan has been successfully divided, all but in name. Animosity has been inseminated in the Levant, where a Palestinian civil war is being nurtured and divisions in Lebanon agitated. The Eastern Mediterranean has been successfully militarized by NATO. Syria and Iran continue to be demonized by the Western media, with a view to justifying a military agenda. In turn, the Western media has fed, on a daily basis, incorrect and biased notions that the populations of Iraq cannot co-exist and that the conflict is not a war of occupation but a "civil war" characterised by domestic strife between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Attempts at intentionally creating animosity between the different ethno-cultural and religious groups of the Middle East have been systematic. In fact, they are part of a carefully designed covert intelligence agenda.

Even more ominous, many Middle Eastern governments, such as that of Saudi Arabia, are assisting Washington in fomenting divisions between Middle Eastern populations. The ultimate objective is to weaken the resistance movement against foreign occupation through a "divide and conquer strategy" which serves Anglo-American and Israeli interests in the broader region.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is in an independent writer based in Ottawa specializing in Middle Eastern and Central Asian affairs. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

1 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Special Briefing on the Travel to the Middle East and Europe of Secretary Condoleezza Rice (Press Conference, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C., July 21, 2006).

LAHORE: President of Baloch Society of North America (BSO-NA) and a prominent separatist Dr. Wahid Baloch met with US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta at an event titled "A Conversation with The Honorable Leon Panetta: United States Secretary of Defence" which was organized by the Center for New American Security (CNAS) in Washington D.C.

Reportedly, Dr. Wahid wanted to draw Panetta's attention to the alleged military operations being carried out by Pakistani and Irani security agencies in Balochistan (Pakistan) and Sistan (Iran-Balochistan).

"On both sides of the border, the foreign occupying forces are engaged, with full impunity, in genocide and systemic elimination of Baloch leaders, students, teachers, intellectuals and political activists""Thousands of Baloch have lost their lives in this non-ending unresolved conflict. Many hundreds of other Baloch have been kidnapped by Pakistan ISI and Iranian security forces remain missing and are lingering in military torture cells and unknown military camps"

"Balochistan, the land of 16 millions worldwide Balochs, despite being rich in natural resources has been kept by the occupying forces poor and extremely backward. There are no roads or any other infrastructures of modern conveniences and the Baloch people live below the poverty line"

"Balochistan is bleeding and calls for international intervention. International Intervention is long overdue and it must be carried out by the UN and international Community, without any further delay, to save the lives of Baloch people"

He asked Leon Panetta to exert diplomatic and military pressure on Pakistan and Iran for the 'safety interests of Baloch people at large'.

"We believe that a free independent democratic Balochistan is in the best interest of the larger cause of liberty, human rights, and democracy. It, will, not only help defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaida terrorists, but will also weaken Pakistan’s and Iran’s ability to export terror and keep China off of Gwadar and Persian Gulf", he argued in his letter.Meeting of separatist self-exiled Baloch lobbyists with Western officials is not new. In the past, Dr. Baloch also met US Vice President Joe Biden and several other top US lawmakers including Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Gary Ackerman and Russ Feingold.

November 22, 2012

Initially tailor-made to counter the winds of the "Arab Spring", the legislative elections that brought a coalition headed by Islamist prime minister Abdelilah Benkirane to power in Morocco last Nov. 25, obliged Mohamed VI to juggle with the balance of political power in his kingdom. In bringing several former ministers into his team of advisers - who answer only to him - and imposing the presence of his men in government posts, the monarch seriously curbed the powers of the new administration

Since the secretive hanging of Pak LeT trained terrorist Ajmal Kasab on 21 November morning, he was the only survivor of at least a ten men band , ill-informed and info and intellect challenged discussions have gone viral on India's corporate channels and in print media

Perhaps Indians are afraid of going to the very genesis of the roots of terrorism created by US led West and Riyadh led Muslim countries during 1980s in south west Asia from which the region and people across the world continue to suffer ( collateral damage ,pity ) specially in North Africa ;West , South West , Central and South Asia .US led West's enduring freedom operation in Afghanistan's Black hole for foreign invaders and the military quagmire after the Operation Iraqi freedom have only provided further field training to misguided and un-educated jobless Muslim youth , with Riyadh and other GCC members providing finances for motivating and other activities culminating in terrorist acts while keeping these elements away from the Saudi Kingdom itself.

After the 119 false flag operation, US has seen little terror action on its soil, except for its own sting operations .Washington has admitted that Al Qaeda members number only a few dozen after leveraging the false claims about it to only curb freedoms in USA by the neoliberal gang of bankers, military industry complex and other corporate interests, which have led to occupy Wall street peoples uprisings across US cities.

Unfortunately India too is following neoliberal-economic policies for making rich richer and poor poorer .Over 90% of welfare schemes for the poor and the miserable masses of India are being siphoned off by the cancer like hold of corrupt political elite and its hangers-on .In Indian history post 1990 will be black Robber Baron era.

The author has maintained from the very beginning since 26/11, that it would have been impossible for Pak agencies to organize 2611 without US knowledge if not connivance , since hundreds of US agents crawl around Karachi from where most of the material for the war in Afghanistan against Taliban etc is being transported and with US command over means of wireless and other communications .Could the training of Kasab group and its departure from Karachi and the operation itself escaped US agencies . Come on, be serious.

Worse David Headley who helped organize 2611 was an FBI double agent and against whom his wife had spilled the beans to a CIA agent in Pakistan before 2611 itself .US never informed India about Headley's activities as complained by top Indian interior official GK Pillai.

If I can get hold of a patriotic and nationalist lawyer I would like to file a PIL petitioning the Supreme Court to ask GOI for an affidavit on Headley's activities and Washington's knowledge about 2611 and even file a claim against complicit FBI/CIA like the case for compensation filed in a US court against PAK ISI.

It would not be a wrong guess to say that US allowed the 2611 terror strike to happen to scuttle Indo-Pak peace negotiations .Since 2611 US had not allowed any more massive terror attack , since the security set up has hardly improved in India .After every terror attack , security cover of politicians and their corrupt cronies is augmented . Look at the kind of arms and security, even Government security cover at the ghastly double murder of liquor baron 'Ponty' Chaddha and his brother in Delhi. Be sure it will be hushed up or endlessly delayed. In India only God looks after the safety of the common men aka aam aadmi.

I shall revisit some of my articles on 2611 and thereafter and associated matters with some comments .Here is the first one.

City's Rape, Shocked and in Disarray, India Watches with Impotent Rage Would New Delhi get sucked onto Western Crusade!

When questioned if he had any regrets in supporting Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan during 1980s, Zbigniew Brzezinski in a January 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, replied, "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"." Nonsense--" responded Brzezinski when asked "If Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today." Brzezinski was President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser.

"Terrorism is a tactic, a technique, a weapon that fanatics, dictators and warriors have resorted to through history. If, as Clausewitz wrote, war is the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism is the continuation of war by other means." Patrick J. Buchanan

"The United States has supported radical Islamic activism over the past six decades, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly," and is thus "partly to blame for the emergence of Islamic terrorism as a world-wide phenomenon." Robert Drefuss.

"It looks more like a classical Special Forces or commando operation than a terrorist one. No group linked to Al Qaeda and certainly not Lashkar has ever mounted a maritime attack of this complexity."- David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency expert and adviser to US Gen. David Petraeus of 'Surge fame' in Iraq. ." [Which would be worse: if the Pakistani military knew about this operation in advance, or if they didn't?] - Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek.

"You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you." Leon Trotsky

"Could this be happening to the "city of dreams"? Our very own Mumbai? The city is no stranger to terror attacks, but the scale, audacity, flamboyance and planning of this assault takes one's breath away. As the faces of anonymous, but not hooded, assassins flashed on TV screens, one thing became quickly clear. These gentlemen were looking for maximum exposure in maximum city. And what a spectacular success, from their perspective, the operation has been. Will Mumbai ever be the same again? "Vinod Mehta, Editor, Outlook magazine, India

Stirred-up Moslems

In his book "From the Shadows", Robert Gates, the re-nominated US Secretary of Defense and an ex- CIA Director had written that the US intelligence services began aiding the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. About his role Brzezinski clarified : "Yes, according to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujaheddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the President in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention."

To Le Nouvel Observateur 's query , "When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?" Brzezinski replied," Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?

"The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire."

Brzezinski admitted on July 3, 1979, that unknown to the public and Congress President Carter secretly authorized $500 million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia to destabilize the Soviet Union. This was called 'Operation Cyclone'

Brzezinski along with Henry Kissinger, whom many would like to try as a war criminal and who badmouthed Indira Gandhi with US President Richard Nixon on the eve of the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan in1971 are close to foreign policy team of incoming US President Barack Obama.

Indian Response and Reaction to Mumbai Rape

Despite several terrorist attacks in major Indian cities this year alone, the reaction of various structures and manpower supposedly in place to counter them, the 60 hour brutal rampage in the city of Mumbai, only exposed the dysfunctional nature of the Indian state and made India a laughing stock in the world, only arousing pity. It exposed lack of any coherent policy or its implementation externally or internally in dealing with such situations. Top Indian political elite after the attack on Indian Parliament in 2001 is itself now well guarded by NSG, which finally carried out the neutralization of the Pakistan trained Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists, reaching Mumbai from Delhi 8 hours after the reign of terror had begun.

The political maneuvers after the rampage give little hope for the future. After 9/11 when Pakistan was coerced into joining USA in the so called 'War on Terror' aka ' Operation enduring freedom' , Indian leaders like LK Advani had wanted India to be the front line state against terror. Well that wish has been fulfilled. West would love Indian masses to be the canon fodder in its fight against Islamic terrorism, incubated and nurtured by UK, USA and others.

New Delhi is relying on the very states, that are responsible for the creation of the monster of religious terrorism around the world throughout history and specially since 1980s. USA, UK and Israel promote policies of 'creative chaos' to promote their interests. Remember how the Sunni states and the West indirectly, encouraged and hailed Iraq's Saddam Hussein in 1980 to douse the flames from Shia Iran's revolution, in which over a million lives were lost and their economies shattered. It only strengthened interests of the West and its allies in the region. Saddam was soon taken care of.

Why not also consult Russia, Iran and others facing West created terrorism. As for any outcome of demarches with the Pakistan government directly or via others, remember the charade TV trial of the confirmed nuclear weapons proliferator Dr A.Q. Khan by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and his being pardoned. Do not expect others to take out your chestnuts out of the fire. It is a wild goose chase as it is emerging. In UNSC Pakistan is reviving the Kashmir red herring and the West hyphenating India-Pakistan again.

In 1987-89, while establishing Indian Foreign Ministry's institute for training diplomats, after reading up on history of violence and how to manage crisis situations created by terrorist attacks, I had designed a week long module. The training module, inaugurated by the then minister of state P. Chidambaram was to sensitize diplomats, officers from police, intelligence, military, civil aviation, NSG and others. When I checked up in 1999 at the time of the hijacking of Indian airlines plane from Katmandu to Kandahar, the module had been discontinued.

This long essay is to inform the public, specially gullible and Anglo-Saxon brain washed Indian chattering and chanting classes, who hog media outlets, to look carefully at the Trojan horses being brought to India; why and what US, UK and Israel are up to. Indian corporate media and writers are easily seduced and co-opted by study grants, scholarships, well paid seminars and fat pensions to those who were on deputations to West controlled institutions like IMF and the World Bank, established to maintain US economic hegemony in the wake of 1944 Bretton Woods agreement. (For example with the term of the current PMO coming to an end in a few months, at least four senior bureaucrats have gone on deputation to these institutions)

When one analyzes the history, the causes and the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, it is important to look at the role played by and still being played by USA, UK, Israel and Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others, in stirring up Muslims, either as mercenaries or for proxy wars to preserve their regimes and promote their interests.

The major axis controlling fundamentalist Islamic terrorism is composed of the ruling corporate elites in USA and UK, the Saud dynasty and the military establishment in Pakistan.

US-Saudi Dynasty-Wahabi Nexus

The first Saudi "state" was founded in 1744 by the al-Saud leader Muhammad ibn Saud who made a Faustian bargain with the religious reformer Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab, the founder of "Wahabism". The pact between the Wahab clan and the house of Saud was sealed with multiple marriages. The links between Saudi family and Wahabi followers have remained durable. The Saudi minister of religion is always a member of the Al Sheikh family, descendants of Ibn Abdul Wahab. The Wahabis' sway over mosques is undoubted with their own religious police . Financed from surplus oil revenues, the Wahabis have extended their reach via networks of Madarsas and mosques throughout the Muslim world, specially in Pakistan. In central Asian republics like Uzbekistan, Pakistani visitors are referred to as Wababis.

Wahabism is extremely austere and rigid. It tolerates little dialogue and even less interpretation, frowns on idolatry, tombstones or the veneration of statues and artworks. Followers prefer to identify themselves as muwahiddun, which means "the unifiers." Wahabis forbid smoking, shaving of beards, abusive language, rosaries and many rights for women. They regard all those who don't practice their form of Islam, including other Muslims, as heathens and enemies.

Two experts Brisard and Dasquie explain that Saudi Arabia has always supported radical Islamic movements (including the Taliban, Al Qaeda and bin Laden) in order to extend its hegemony over the region and Muslims. Riyadh's support of the Taliban kept Afghanistan from falling under Iranian influence.

According to Kepel, the noted French Arabist, following the 1979 over running of the Grand Mosque at Mecca by fundamentalists (the debacle was finally ended with the help of French special forces) and after Operation Desert Shield when United States troops moved into Saudi Arabia on August 7, 1990, the Saudi government desperately needed the religious blessing of the Wahabi clergy to sanctify US troops onto Saudi soil. The concessions granted to Wahabis completed the kingdom's fall into "bottomless Islamization". Sunni Islam will remain backward and mired in mediaeval mores, unable to face modern day challenges unless there is a catharsis after a revolution like of Shia Islam in Iran.

In 1945, before a declining Britain was divested of its colonies and influence, USA signed a memo with the British to protect "very extensive joint interest and � control of the great bulk of the free petroleum resources of the world. --The Middle East was a vital prize for any power interested in world influence or domination", since control of the world's oil reserves also meant control of the world economy. After the decline of UK and France, US stepped in as the dominant neo-colonial power in the region as elsewhere.

"One of the basic policies of the United States in the Near East is unqualifiedly to support the territorial integrity and political independence of Saudi Arabia". A 1953 internal U.S. document: states -"United States policy is to keep the sources of oil in the Middle East in American hands." (quoted by Mohammed Heikal in 'Cutting the lion's tail'.) In 1958, a secret British document described the principal objectives of Western policy in the Middle East " (a) to ensure free access for Britain and other Western countries to oil produced in States bordering the Gulf; (b) to ensure the continued availability of that oil on favorable terms and for surplus revenues of Kuwait; (c) to bar the spread of Communism and pseudo-Communism in the area and subsequently to defend the area against the brand of Arab nationalism."

Since then a nexus has emerged between US, the rich Saudi ruling elite with its extravagant life style and its familial extension to puritan Wahabis, In exchange for security of the dynasty the peninsula's oil wealth and revenues have been handed over for exploitation and benefit of the West led by USA (a major cause of anger among Arab masses.) This nexus has stood the test of time with Washington doing everything possible to maintain the feudal regime with its mediaeval practices. The regime controls "the largest family business" in the world without any popular mandate or accountability.

The Saud family-US nexus was anointed after President Franklin Roosevelt's meeting with the Saudi King aboard a warship in 1945, who said "I hereby find that the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States." Jimmy Carter, a later day saint, in 1980, put it even more forcefully: "Let our position be absolutely clear. An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States."

Washington backed that commitment with military treaties safeguarding the Middle East. Apart from old CENTO and now NATO, U.S. military bases are stretched into east Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the Gulf to protect the Middle East oil. Then came the Rapid Deployment Force and the U.S. Central Command and the U.S. 5th Fleet, now based in Bahrain. The 1991 Gulf War led to a massive expansion of the U.S. military presence in the region, including US troops on the sacred Saudi soil, a major cause of anguish and deep resentment among conservative Saudi Muslims led by Osama bin Laden. US troops were shifted away only after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

ME Oil and Partition of IndiaA former Indian diplomat Narendra Singh Sarila, in a well researched book 'The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition', based on British documents, uncovers the truth that, after the 2nd world War, realizing that London had to relinquish India, the British leadership across the political spectrum, Conservatives and Labor, intrigued, told lies and finally partitioned the Indian subcontinent creating the state of Pakistan. Because with Mahatma Gandhi with his opposition to violence and war and Jawaharlal Nehru 's non-real politic idealism and vision of creating friendship and understanding among colonized and exploited people of the world, India would not join Western military pacts to protect from the Soviet Union the oil resources in the Middle East being exploited by Western powers.

Britain's ultimate objective was to retain at least some part in the North-West of India, "for defensive and offensive action against the USSR in any future dispensation in the sub-continent". And Britain knew that this could be best achieved by having a willing and subservient Pakistan as its client. So the only way -- was to use Jinnah to detach areas of India, which borders Iran, Afghanistan and Sinkiang and create a new state there. Sarila documents in detail how after the end of World War II in 1945, the new Labor government of Clement Attlee and Wavell decided to divide India and used Jinnah and political Islam to protect their strategic interests.

A top-secret telegram of Lord Wavell, then Viceroy, to the Secretary of State in London dated February 6, 1946, suggested the lines on which British India could be divided. On June 3, 1947, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, while addressing the Labor Party's annual conference, spilled the beans that the division of India "would help consolidate Britain in the Middle East".

Sarila also traces the roots of the present Kashmir problem and how the matter was handled in the UN to favor ally Pakistan.

US-Pakistan Military Axis Unlike India, Pakistan began with weak grassroots political organizations, with the British-era civil servants strengthening bureaucracy's hold over the polity and decision-making and soon called for the military's help. While the politicians had wanted strengthening relations with Britain, General Ayub Khan, encouraged by the US military, forged closer cooperation with the Pentagon. And in 1958 the military took over power, with Ayub Khan, a mere Colonel at the time of the partition soon promoting himself to Field Marshall. He eased out officers who did not fit into the Anglo-Saxon scheme of using Pakistan's strategic position against the evolving Cold War confrontation against the communist block.

General Zia ul-Haq was a cunning schemer, veritably a mullah in uniform. While seducing the north Indian media with lavish praise and kebabs, he planned Operation Topaz, which in 1989 fueled insurgency in Kashmir. His Islamisation of the country made the situation for women and minorities untenable. The judicial killing of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1977 turned General Zia into a pariah, but the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made him a US darling, restoring and fatally strengthening the Pakistan military's links with the Pentagon.

This led to the hold of Pakistani military and ISI becoming pervasive, omnipotent, omniscient and ominous for Pakistan. This defense alliance, the seeds of which were planted by Ayub Khan, and the symbiotic relationship between the ISI and the CIA bolstered under General Zia, was never really dismantled and is unlikely to be fully disentangled ever. The form of government in a country has seldom bothered the US in the pursuit of its national interests. In fact US prefers military and other dictators; easier to handle.

Like the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, September 11 revived the imperative necessity to bring Pakistan closer to US once again (Washington even threatened to bomb Pakistan to stone age if it did not fall in line ). The US needed Pakistan to protect itself from a backlash of its earlier Afghan policies of creating the Mujaheddin and then Taliban, Washington desperately wanted to stop Pakistan's nuclear material or bombs falling into Jihadi hands, and to at least curtail, further damage to US interests in the region.

Establishment of Terrorist Nurseries in Afghanistan and Pakistan

From 1979 to the exit of Soviet troops in 1989, USA , UK other western countries, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf and Muslim states and even China (which sold AKM assault rifles and Type 69 RPGs, with US even supplying Stinger anti-aircraft missiles systems) exploited Jihadis as a weapon against the Russian forces in Afghanistan. Washington and Riyadh contributed most of the funds, reportedly totaling even up to $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan (US with $600 million in aid per year, with a matching amount coming from the Gulf states.) The CIA and its allies, Pakistan ISI, British MI6 and others recruited, supplied, and trained almost 40,000 hard core radical Mujahedeen from forty Muslim countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Zia's military government established some 2,500 religious school nurseries, which were funded by Saudi Arabia and backed by the U.S. Some 225,000 children who went to these schools were trained to fight as guerrillas in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Not a penny was spent in defense of the Afghan people.

Among those who answered the call for Jihad was Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. Although in his violent campaign against US interests, bin Laden had attacked US embassies in East Africa, with his camps being attacked by US missiles in retaliation, it was not until the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001, when the realization came painfully to USA of the possibilities of nuclear terror, with linkages between Al Qaeda,Taliban and others in nuclear armed Pakistan's powerful ISI.

After the withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989, West largely forgot about the monster they had created. But it was obvious that the festering nurseries of terrorists left south of Russian underbelly and just across in the restive Muslim Xinxiang province of China and India's Jammu and Kashmir, would sooner or later affect these countries. The Mujaheddin mercenaries now took on a life of their own. Hundreds of them returned home to Algeria, Chechnya, Kosovo, and Kashmir to carry on terrorist attacks in Allah's name against the purveyors of secular "corruption." In fact Lashkar-e-Toiba was created while the West and Muslim countries were waging their war against Russia in Afghanistan.

The 1980s jihad also spawned a home-grown malignancy in Pakistan - one that now poses a powerful threat to Pakistan itself. Free from the Jihad against Soviet troops after the Russians withdrawal, in 1990s Pakistan's ISI gave the Jihadis a fresh assignment, to create terror in Jammu and Kashmir. Led by Afghan veterans, fighters were secretly trained, armed and funded by the ISI to fight Indian soldiers in Kashmir. The best were later sent to help the Taliban in Afghanistan against NATO and US troops supporting the Karzai government in Kabul, foisted on Afghanistan by Washington after 2002.

"Be Nice to America, Otherwise We will Bring you Democracy "-A New York poster

Since feudal times the landholding system in Afghanistan remained unchanged, with more than 75 percent of the land owned by big landlords comprising only 3 percent of the rural population. In the mid-1960s, democratic revolutionary elements had coalesced to form the People's Democratic Party (PDP). After the secret US intervention in 1979 mentioned above a seriously besieged leftist government of Taraki invited Moscow to send troops to help ward off the Mujaheddin and foreign mercenaries, all recruited, financed, and well-armed by the CIA.

A report in the San Francisco Chronicle (17 November 2001) noted that under the Taraki regime Kabul had been "a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture, engineering and business at the city's university. Afghan women held government jobs�-in the 1980s, there were seven female members of parliament. Women drove cars, traveled and went on dates. Fifty percent of university students were women." This had aroused serious opposition from several quarters; feudal landlords who opposed the land reforms and tribesmen and fundamentalist mullahs who vehemently opposed the government's policy of gender equality and education of women and children."

In Afghanistan itself, by 1995 an extremist strain of Sunni Islam called the Taliban---heavily funded and advised by the ISI and the CIA and with the support of Islamic political parties in Pakistan---fought its way to power, taking over most of the country, luring many tribal chiefs into its fold with threats and bribes.

The years of war that have followed the US intervention in July, 1979, have taken millions of Afghan lives. Along with those killed by Cruise missiles, Stealth bombers, Tomahawks, daisy cutters, and land mines are those who now continue to die of hunger, cold, lack of shelter, and water.

Al Qaeda The strength and capability of Al Qaeda has been used as bogeyman by the Bush administration for political and electoral purposes. Writes Anand Gopal, "As Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants trickled into Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, Islamabad signed on to the Bush administration's Global War on Terror. It was a profitable venture: Washington delivered billions of dollars in aid and advanced weaponry to Pakistan's military government. In return, Islamabad targeted al-Qaeda militants, every few months parading a captured "high-ranking" leader before the news cameras, while leaving the Taliban leadership on its territory untouched. While the Pakistani military establishment never completely eradicated al-Qaeda -- doing so might have stanched the flow of aid -- it kept up just enough pressure so that the Arab militants declared war on the government. Despite such foreign connections, the Afghan rebellion remains mostly a homegrown affair. Foreign fighters -- especially al-Qaeda -- have little ideological influence on most of the insurgency, and most Afghans keep their distance from such outsiders. Al-Qaeda's vision of global jihad doesn't resonate in the rugged highlands and windswept deserts of southern Afghanistan. Instead, the major concern throughout much of the country is intensely local: personal safety."

Simon Jenkins, the noted British journalist after visiting USA recently wrote a column in The Guardian, "America, Cowering to an imaginary enemy, is not the country I once knew". He said that "America seems much in need of Roosevelt's maxim to stop fearing fear itself. Virtually all comment on the Mumbai massacre has mentioned 9/11 and al Qaeda and thus invited citizens to continue feeling afraid.-- Any stick will do to elevate al-Qaeda as America's enemy number one.- Al-Qaeda does not, yet it has become the ruling obsession of Bush's courtiers. They see al-Qaeda fiends on every side, bearded mullahs, caches of bombs, ricin and anthrax. The precautionary principle has become fanaticized. � "

Yes , Muslims across the world, with grievances have created cells based on Al Qaeda philosophy and pattern.

How London's Sordid Love Affair with Muslim Brotherhood was Transformed into Washington's Unleashing of Fundamentalist Islam

Let us look at the history how Britain and then USA have promoted Islamic fundamentalism against popular, nationalist and socialist governments in Muslim countries to safeguard Western interests.

In his book "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam," Robert Dreyfuss paints a vivid picture of how the United States spent the last century taking over the British imperial apparatus in the Middle East ;sponsoring and manipulating Islamic fundamentalism to control and exploit petroleum resources and politics. Dreyfuss's book based on major academic literature and actors on the scene is an excellent survey of the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and its various 20th-Century offshoots.

The United States, Dreyfuss argues, has supported radical Islamic activism over the past six decades, "sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly," and is thus "partly to blame for the emergence of Islamic terrorism as a world-wide phenomenon." He writes about U.S. support for the Muslim Brotherhood against Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, whose goal was to end Western domination and control in the Middle East. Western interests used the Islamic Brotherhood to destabilize the Nasser government. The Brotherhood remains active and continues to conduct terrorist activities in Egypt.

Britain's Imperial History of Divide and Rule in Middle East

Although the Muslim Brotherhood was formally launched in Egypt in 1928, the roots of the British-sponsored policy began in the last quarter of the 19th Century , when the British intelligence sponsored the career of a Persian-born Shia named Jamaleddin, later known as Jamaleddin al-Afghani (1838-97) to hide his sect. A British (and French) Freemason and a professed atheist, al-Afghani spent his entire adult life as an agent of British intelligence, fomenting "Islamist" insurrections where they suited British imperial goals. At points in his fascinating career, he served as Minister of War and Prime Minister of Iran, before leading an insurrection against the Shah. He was a founder of the Young Egypt movement, which was part of a worldwide network of British Jacobin fronts that waged war against Britain's imperial rivals during the second half of the 19th Century. In Sudan, following the Mahdi-led nationalist revolt and the murder of Britain's Lord Gordon, al-Afghani organized an "Islamist" counterrevolution in support of restoration of British colonial control.

Al-Afghani was backed by the British with funding, a publishing house and other amenities. Al-Afghani's leading disciple and fellow British agent was Mohammed Abduh (1849-1905). The Egypt born Abduh founded the Salafiyya movement, under the patronage of the British proconsul of Egypt, Lord Cromer. In the 1870s, al-Afghani and Abduh founded the Young Egypt movement, which battled against secular Egyptian nationalists.

In 1899, two years after al-Afghani's death, Lord Cromer made Abduh the Grand Mufti of Egypt. Abduh in turn, begot Syrian Mohammed Rashid Rida (1865-1935), his leading disciple. Rida founded the organization that would be the immediate precursor to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Society of Propaganda and Guidance and an Institute. It published a journal, The Lighthouse, which provided "Islamist" backing to the British colonial rule over Egypt, by attacking Egyptian nationalists as "atheists and infidels." In Cairo, under British patronage, Rida brought in Islamists from every part of the Muslim world to be trained in political agitation in support of British colonial rule.

Hassan al-Banna (1906-49), a graduate of the Institute for Propaganda and Guidance, founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, which was an unabashed British intelligence front. The mosque in Ismailia, Egypt, which was the first headquarters of the Brotherhood, was built by the (British) Suez Canal Company, near a British World War I military base. During World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood functioned as a de facto branch of the British military. In 1942, the Brotherhood created the "Secret Apparatus," an underground paramilitary organization that specialized in assassinations and espionage.

Hitler's and London's Grand Mufti

During the formative years of the Muslim Brotherhood, the British were simultaneously promoting the career of another "Islamist" named Haj Amin al-Husseini. A notorious anti-Semite with little Islamic theological training , he was promoted by Sir Ronald Storrs, the British Governor General and in 1921 installed as president of the Supreme Muslim Council, a British-sponsored association of hand-picked Muslim religious leaders . With British rigging , Al-Husseini was 'elected ' next year the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. During the World War II, al-Husseini, and al-Banna, wound up in Berlin as a propagandist for the Nazi assault against the Jews. But al-Husseini was back in the Holy Land, again on the British intelligence payroll, now a firebrand anti-communist propagandist for the Middle East Broadcasting Station. [The current Western proxy leaders in Iraq, Ahmed Chalabbi and Ex Prime Minister Iyad Alawi , have been unabashed operatives of CIA,MI6 and others .So the pattern continues]

Hassan al-Banna was assassinated in 1949 by Egyptian security but by that time, the Muslim Brotherhood had vastly expanded its ranks, and had spread to other parts of the Middle East, where the British had a major postwar presence. The Muslim Brotherhood established branches in Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.

'British Brains and American Brawn to rule the world' � ChurchillAfter the untimely death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 , Winston Churchill 's famous "Iron Curtain" address came to define the Cold War. An Anglo-American partnership that Churchill once described: "With British brains and American brawn, we can rule the world."

During the 1950s the United States sided with Great Britain against the legitimate, popular secularist governments of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and Iran's Mohammed Mossadegh. And in both instances, the Anglo-Americans used the Muslim Brotherhood as the battering ram to bring down the popular regimes. In the case of Egypt, President Dwight Eisenhower, in a most decisive postwar break with London, neutralized the joint British-French-Israeli invasion of Suez in 1956, temporarily backing the Nasser regime. (For years after the Suez crisis, Eisenhower and the United States were admired in Egypt).

One of the architects of playing the Islamists against the nationalist /socialist /communists in the Middle East was Dr. Bernard Lewis, a wartime British intelligence Arab Bureau spy, who in his crucial 1953 essay "Communism and Islam," argued for a strategy of promoting right-wing Islamist movements and regimes as a weapon against Soviet backed nationalist and socialist regimes in the region. Lewis's scheme was embraced by the Dulles brothers, Secretary of State John Foster and CIA Director Allen, despite reservations from President Eisenhower and some leading CIA Middle East specialists.

Despite Washington's ambivalence about Nasser, Britain's Prime Minister Anthony Eden had no doubt that the Egyptian President was a menace to British interests and had to be eliminated. George Young, a top MI6 officer posted in Cairo, ordered by Eden to assassinate Nasser, according to MI6 documents, turned to the Muslim Brotherhood's for the job , leading to a full-scale war between the Brotherhood and Nasser. Thousands were killed, and eventually, the Brotherhood was forced to flee, taking refuge in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other pro-US/UK Arab regimes. Saudi Arabia funded Egypt's Brothers against Nasser .Riyadh also funded the Brothers in Jordan as King Hussein complained when I was posted at Amman (1989-92).

Operations in Iran: 'Made in England'Contrary to popular assumptions, the Muslim Brotherhood was not exclusively a Sunni movement. In Iran, a Shia cleric, Ayatollah Seyyed Abolqassin Kashani, was a close collaborator of al-Banna, his heir Ramadan, and other Brothers. In 1943, he founded an Iranian Shia branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, called the Devotees of Islam. Like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Devotees had their own assassination squads. They failed, in 1949, to assassinate the Shah.

The author remembers what Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan told him in 1990s, when Tehran re-established diplomatic relations with Amman. As the Iranian CDA spent most of his time in the National Assembly where after the recent elections the Muslim Brotherhood had a sizable presence Hassan wryly commented that the CDA thought that he was accredited to the Assembly and not to the Palace of Hashemite King Hussein, his brother.

The appointment of Mohammed Mossadegh as the new Prime Minister, led to yet-another Anglo-American coup against a secular nationalist regime, falsely branded "communist." As in Egypt, the British turned to the local Muslim Brotherhood�the Devotees of Islam�to stage the street riots and other actions that led to the overthrow of Mossadegh. The coup in Iran became the food of legend, about CIA officers Kermit and Archibald Roosevelt, who organized the bazaari to stem the tide of communism and stop the nationalization of British oil holdings.

"A well-informed Iranian source reported that Mossadegh made the decision to step down, rather than either side with the Soviet-backed Iranian Communist Party or unleash his own mass base of supporters to battle the Muslim Brothers and the allied bazaari. It was Mossadegh's concern about the Iranian people that had more to do with the success of the so-called "coup," than the clandestine prowess of the Roosevelt boys and their British partners."

The Khomeini Revolution

The Khomeini revolution was a blowback against UK-US supported Shah's repressive regime and resentment against the overthrow of popular and nationalist Mossadegh government. From the beginning, not all Iranians fully supported the Islamic revolution (in which skillful use was made of Karbala - where Imam Hussein and his army and family fought and died for Islam - and other Shia imagery), its agenda and implementation. Khomeini was a rallying point for all against the Shah (caricatured as the sultan or the caliph), the corroding corruption, the excesses of the Savak secret police and its backers, the CIA, the hopes and aspirations of the youth for social justice, the masses suffering from inflation and sudden oil wealth inequities.

Khomeini provided that unflinching moral and spiritual bulwark against the Shah's armed-to-the-teeth military machine and his capacity to deny whatever concessions were demanded, and what was held out in the end was too little too late. Many Iranians who opposed the hard line clerics and their killjoy agenda were eliminated, forced to flee or went underground. Even in 1980, disenchanted, only one fourth of Iranians went to the parliamentary polls. Expectedly, many clerics, some even senior to Khomeini, like Shariatmadari, favored political parties and more freedoms. But by sheer force, the radical conservatives took over power, sometimes in spite of Khomeini. It is the current US policies which have strengthened radical forces in Iran and catapulted President Mahmud Ahmedinejed against a reformer like President Khatami.

Syrian Brothers The next British-backed battle between fundamentalist Islam and nationalism occurred in Syria where the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood was founded by Ramadan. When a Baathist military coup took place in 1969, the Brotherhood began a campaign of irregular warfare, that built momentum throughout the 1970s. In 1979, the Muslim Brotherhood staged a military assault on the Syrian Army academy at Hama, setting the main building on fire and killing 83 cadets mostly from Alawaite sect belonging to the ruling Assad regime. The government killed many thousands of Syrian brothers who then escaped to Saudi Arabia.

Afghanistan and Muslim Brotherhood

Dreyfuss gives a brief history of the evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood in Afghanistan with roots in Egypt. A group of young Afghan students after spending several years at the al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, a center of Muslim Brotherhood activity, returned to Afghanistan and formed a branch of the Brothers, the Islamic Society. "The Professors," as they were known, would later form the backbone of the Afghan Mujahedeen, who waged a West and Saudi backed decade-long war against the Soviet Army occupation. The three leading "Professors" were: Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, Burhanuddin Rabbani, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Sayyaf and Hekmatyar, in particular, were backed by the Pakistani ISI, and by Pakistan's own Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Group, founded by Abdul Ala Mawdudi. The three professors led the major factions of the Afghan insurgency.

One of the key recruiters for the Jihad in Afghanistan was a Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood member Abdullah Azzam. In 1984, under Anglo-American and Pakistani sponsorship, Azzam and a leading prot�g�, bin Laden, founded the Service Bureau in Peshawar, Pakistan. The Service Bureau served as a hospitality service for incoming jihadists.

USA and the Rise of the Taliban to PowerIn April 1992 various guerrilla armies took over Kabul, where they promptly started fighting among themselves for power. There were street fights in the capital, battles for control of strategic positions. The U.S encouraged and enabled Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to support one faction , whose army had destroyed most of Kabul in 1993. Iran, Russia, India, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan chose other factions to back. For the next three years, the United States would support first one, then another fundamentalist faction in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the people suffered, caught in endless civil war.

Around 1993, the Pakistani government became interested in opening up trade with the new Central Asian republics that had split from the old USSR. USA was interested in American UNOCAL laying energy pipelines from central Asia to Pakistan and beyond. But the warfare in Afghanistan blocked the roads. A way to end the warfare was needed.

The Pakistan government once again set up schools for guerrillas, masked as religious schools. They were recruited from the Afghan refugee camps. The Taliban were nurtured in these schools and camps. They were supported by the Pakistani Deobandis and their political party the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). In 1993, when JUI entered the government coalition of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, ties between JUI and the Army and ISI were established. In 1995, with the downfall of the Hezb-I-Islami Hektmatyar government in Kabul, the Taliban not only re-instated a hard line Islamic government, they also "handed control of training camps in Afghanistan over to JUI factions..."

By the summer of 1994 the first grouping of guerrillas was ready. It was led by older religious teachers and Pakistani soldiers, and armed by Saudi Arabia, with the cooperation from the CIA. The arms, food and four wheel drive vehicles gave the Taliban the material means to grow rapidly, against those less equipped. Jane Defense Weekly confirms that "half of Taliban manpower and equipment originated in Pakistan under the ISI". The Taliban Islamic State was to serve US geopolitical interests.

The Taliban were only one more armed reactionary band in a country with lots of them. Yet in a couple of years they were able to take power. They profited from the advanced decomposition of the state apparatus and were able to take entire cities without combat. Some of the war lords preferred to join the Taliban, while others fled instead of fighting.

The Taliban presented themselves as champions against corruption and against the rule of war lords. They appeared as austere, disinterested combatants, opposed to pillage and respecting private property. They received at least the resigned consent of the population to end the civil war, even if that meant giving up the most basic liberties.

The Koran was already the law of the land, and rights of women hardly existed. After the Taliban took control of Kabul in September 1996, Glyn Davies, a State Department spokesman, said that the United States saw "nothing criticizable in the measures now taken by the Taliban movement to impose Islamic law in the zones which it controls." U.S. imperialism saw the Taliban as establishing order. UNOCAL, the giant California-based oil company, looked forward to being able to build a giant pipeline across the country.

After coming to power, the Taliban again opened training camps for recruits from fundamentalist groups around the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

The Pakistani Taliban � Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan

The Pakistani Taliban or the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP), are led by Baitullah Mahsud. Centered in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that lie between the North-West Frontier Province, it differs from their Afghan cousins in being mostly tribal rather than clerically trained in madrasahs (though they have some clerics among them). While Pakistan's population is 165 million or so, the population of FATA is about 3.5 million. Moreover, many clans in the tribal agencies actively oppose the TTP and have engaged in battles with them. The Pakistani Taliban are a relatively small group, probably a few thousand strong but they are powerful in North and South Waziristan and also in the northern agency of Bajaur. Apparently they have gained strength in the Khyber Agency, as well. Since FATA abuts Peshawar, the Pakistani Taliban have on several occasions encroached on that city. The Khyber Agency lies between Peshawar and the Khyber Pass, the easiest road into southern Afghanistan from Pakistan.

The War in ChechnyaThe main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the war in Chechnya had been planned during a secret summit of Hezbollah International held in 1996 in Mogadishu, Somalia. The summit, was attended by Osama bin Laden and high-ranking Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officers. In this regard, the involvement of Pakistan's ISI in Chechnya "goes far beyond supplying the Chechens with weapons and expertise: the ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war

Mujaheddin in Balkans and US involvementThe JUI with the support of the Saudi Wahabi movements also played a key role in recruiting volunteers to fight in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. The Golden Crescent drug trade was used to finance and equip the Bosnian Muslim Army (starting in the early 1990s) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) /There is evidence that Mujaheddin mercenaries were fighting in the ranks of KLA-NLA terrorists in their assaults into Macedonia.

On US support to Mujaheddin in the Balkans read extracts from "Turkey: 'Sow war and reap terror' by K Gajendra Singh , Atimes.com ,22 November, 2003( extracts form this article , hosted by over a hundred websites, and quoted by many reputed columnists including USA's Tom Engelhardt) "During the current debate, the Balkan chapter of the 1990s and the US and European role in the breakup of Yugoslavia and subsequent events are not scrutinized closely. The origins of al-Qaeda and other terror groups during the Afghan war of 1979-1992, their fight against the Soviet army and the role of the US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and others is well documented, including Osama bin Laden's drive to recruit Muslim volunteers world-wide. US officials estimate that tens of thousands of foreign fighters were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and guerrilla warfare tactics in Afghan camps that the US Central Intelligence Agency helped set up between1985-92.

"After the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, and the Najibullah communist regime collapsed in 1992, the Afghan mujahideen became irrelevant to the US. But the mujahideen had acquired a taste for fighting, and now they had no cause. But soon a new cause arose.

"During 1992-95, the Pentagon helped with the movement of thousands of mujahideen and other Islamic elements from Central Asia, even some Turks, into Europe to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs.

"It was very important in the rise of mujahideen forces and in the emergence of current cross-border Islamic terrorist groups who think nothing of moving from state to state in the search of outlets for their jihadi mission. In moving to Bosnia, Islamic fighters were transported from the caves of Afghanistan and the Middle East into Europe; from an outdated battleground of the Cold War to the major world conflict of the day; from being yesterday's men to fighting alongside the West's favored side in the clash of the Balkans. If Western intervention in Afghanistan created the mujahideen, Western intervention in Bosnia appears to have globalized it."

There is a Dutch government report after investigations, prepared by Professor C Wiebes of Amsterdam University, into the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995, entitled "Intelligence and the War in Bosnia", published in April 2002.

It details the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamic groups from the Middle East and their efforts to assist Bosnia's Muslims. By 1993, a vast amount of weapons were being smuggled through Croatia to the Muslims, organized by "clandestine agencies" of the US, Turkey and Iran, in association with a range of Islamic groups that included the Afghan Mujahideen and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah. Arms bought by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia were airlifted from the Middle East to Bosnia - airlifts with which, Wiebes points out, the US was "very closely involved". [ The same gang which fought against Soviet Russia in Afghanistan , was now fighting against Russia's Slav Orthodox ally ,Yugoslavia and succeeded in breaking up the secular socialist state.]

The Pentagon's alliance with Islamic elements permitted mujahideen fighters to be "flown in" as shock troops for particularly hazardous operations against Serb forces. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times in October 2001, from 1992 as many as 4,000 mujahideen from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe reached Bosnia to fight with the Muslims. Richard Holbrooke, America's former chief Balkans peace negotiator, said as much. The Bosnian Muslims "wouldn't have survived" without the imported mujahideen, which was a "pact with the devil" from which Bosnia would take long to recover. If the US made a pact with the devil, then the Muslim mujahideen made a pact with Satan. They temporized with the Christian West to defeat the ungodly Russian communists, now they are after the US-led Crusaders." ---

"But by the end of the 1990s, State Department officials (as now vis-a-vis the Pentagon), were increasingly worried about the consequences of this devil's pact sponsored by the Pentagon. Under the terms of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord, the foreign mujahideen units were required to disband and leave the Balkans. Yet in 2000, the State Department raised concerns about the "hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists" who became Bosnian citizens after fighting against the Serbs, and who will remain a potential terror threat to Europe and the United States. "

US officials claimed that "one of bin Laden's top lieutenants had sent operatives to Bosnia", and that during the 1990s Bosnia had served as a "staging area and safe haven" for al-Qaeda and others. The Bill Clinton administration learned that it was one thing to permit the movement of Islamic groups across territories; it was quite another to rein them back in again. "

And in spite of the official US stand against jihadis, it permitted the growth and movement of mujahideen cadres in Europe during the 1990s. In the run up to Clinton and Blair's Kosovo war of 1999, the US backed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) against Serbia. The Jerusalem Post reported in 1998 that KLA members, like the Bosnian Muslims earlier, were "provided with financial and military support from Islamic countries", and had been "bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters and mujahideen ... [some of whom] were trained in Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan". So the US's pact with the devil continued.

The aspect of the mujahideen's encouragement by the US and its growth in Balkan Europe has been largely overlooked, and the Bosnia connection remains largely unexplored. In Jason Burke's excellent Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, Bosnia is mentioned only in passing. Kimberley McCloud and Adam Dolnik of the Monterey Institute of International Studies have written some incisive commentary calling for rational thinking when assessing al-Qaeda's origins and threat - but little on the Bosnian link.

A cool analysis of today's disparate Islamic terror groups, created in Afghanistan and emboldened by the Bosnian experience, would do much to shed some light on precisely the dangers of such intervention. Car bombers in Istanbul on November 15 and 20 [2003] are perhaps the results. "

Taliban and UNOCALIn December 1997, the Taliban visited UNOCAL's Houston refinery operations. Interestingly, the chief Taliban leader based in Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Omar, now on America's international Most Wanted List now, was firmly in the UNOCAL camp. UNOCAL had pumped large sums of money to the Taliban hierarchy in Kandahar and its expatriate Afghan supporters in the United States. During the Bush administration, beholden to the oil interests that pumped millions of dollars into the 2000 campaign, , various Taliban envoys were received at the State Department, CIA, and National Security Council. The CIA, which appears, more than ever, to be a virtual extended family of the Bush oil interests, facilitated a renewed approach to the Taliban.

There were even reports that the CIA met with bin Laden in the months before September 11 attacks. The French newspaper Le Figaro quoted an Arab specialist named Antoine Sfeir who postulated that the CIA met with bin Laden in July in a failed attempt to bring him back under its fold. Sfeir said the CIA maintained links with bin Laden before the U.S. attacked his terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 and, more astonishingly, kept them going even after the attacks. Sfeir told the paper, "Until the last minute, CIA agents hoped bin Laden would return to U.S. command, as was the case before 1998." Bin Laden actually officially broke with the US in 1991 when US troops began arriving in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. Bin Laden felt this was a violation of the Saudi regime's responsibility to protect the Islamic Holy Shrines of Mecca and Medina from the infidels. Bin Laden's anti-American and anti-House of Saud rhetoric soon reached a fever pitch.

Bush and US Energy Interests

Bush Family's interests in the energy sector and that of Vice President Dick Cheney are quite well known .Secretary of State Condi Rice was on the board of Chevron .Khalilzad, a Pushtun and former US ambassador to Kabul, Baghdad and UN , was in addition to being a consultant to the RAND Corporation, a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban government. According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan.

Karzai, a leader of the southern Afghan Pushtun Durrani tribe, a mujaheddin was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George HW Bush, and their Pakistani ISI Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA and continued to serve the agency's interests and the Bush family and their oil friends.

It is clear that fossil fuels drive American policy in the region and the construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of the Bush administration from the outset. While UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998, a series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was never off the table. Reports suggested that perhaps the U.S. representatives may have recklessly threatened the Taliban prior to the September 11 attack, thereby provoking Al Qaeda into action.

After Foreign Policy, would India Out-source Intelligence Inputs to USA, UK and Israel

As part of its 'strategic relationship' with USA , India has modified its foreign policy in tune with that of Washington ,like voting with USA against Iran in Vienna on Iran's legitimate nuclear fuel enrichment for power generation. As among the dead in Mumbai were 18 foreigners including Americans, Britons and Israelis : anti-terrorism officers from Scotland Yard, FBI experts and Mossad operators are coming over to India . Strategic affairs expert K Subrahmanyam , part of pro-US lobby in India tries to rationalize : "What we have here is an international problem with roots in Pakistan ... India's attacks were once just its problem. Now they are problems for the whole world."

The way Scotland Yard handled 7 July , 2005 blasts in London was clumsy , with almost Laurel Hardy type of brutal assassination of the Brazilian boy , without any provocation or warning . The Yard may be better than politician controlled and corrupt Indian police establishment, but it is hardly a shining example.

The stunning events of 11 September, 2001 exposed the incompetence of US intelligence agencies , which are also amenable to tailoring their reports to the US administration 's political agenda ' like the illegal, 'Awe and Shock' invasion and brutal occupation of Iraq. Subsequent reports to improve security by bringing in Patriot Act etc have taken away freedoms of US citizens, blacklisting and profiling of US Muslim or those from the Middle East , outsourcing of torture and created Gulags at Guantanamo, Abu Gharaib, Bagram and even on US ships. Ill informed and ignorant admirers of US intelligence claim that 9/11 has not been repeated .All it required was better airport security. Would Indian political and corporate class and other humpty dumpties agree to security checks which even Senator Ted Kennedy and others go through in USA .The village yokels and criminals in India's political class would beat up the security staff.

Israel 's Defense establishment and its generals who occupy key posts in government, security, defense industry and intelligence are a law into themselves with little accountability; blackmailing and terrorizing Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims states with its unconcealed horde of nuclear bombs, with full US support in UN and elsewhere. US presidential candidates must first kowtow to all powerful Israeli organ AIPAC before declaring candidature as was done by both President elect Obama and Hillary Clinton or for that matter for any electoral post in USA. It is another matter that Lebanese Hezbollah defeated the so-called invincible Israeli Defense Forces on the ground in South Lebanon in 2006, as conceded even by an investigation headed by a senior Israeli judge.

Former US President Jimmy Carter compared Israeli occupation of West Bank and Gaza and treatment of Palestinians with apartheid in his book .He was blackballed and not even allowed to attend Obama's nomination as its presidential candidate at the party conference. The Jewish lobby in USA came like a ton of bricks on two respected US university professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt , both Jews on their article " Israel lobby in US". In an article "Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust" Richard Falk, an American Jew wrote ,"Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty."

Most Indian ministers , decision makers , key media persons and others have visited Israel as guests . India's intelligence services maintain close contact with Israeli spy services with many ardent admirers ,some of whom were even trained there .The original primer ( Al Qaida ) for training Indian intelligence operatives was laid down by departing colonial masters and would be updated by US spy establishment . Russians have experience of handling the Chechen insurgency encouraged and supported by the West and a wealth of experience in handling Mujaheddin in Afghanistan. One reads of little contacts between them and the Indian security services or forces.

These converts to Anglo-Saxon vision must be reminded that in 1990 , Washington played around with aerial photographs of Saddam Hussein's military dispositions along the border with Saudi Arabia with Kuwait, which he had invaded, to hoodwink a reluctant Riyadh to let US troops occupy Arabia . Trusting Western agencies can be dangerous.

Some elements in Indian intelligence and security establishment along with Hindutva hard core would love nothing better than treating Muslims in India like Israel treats Palestinians and other Arabs , without realizing that Pakistan unlike the Arab states was allowed to develop its nuclear infrastructure and weapons during the 1980s by the West. After the war in Afghanistan , Pakistan has also become a transit point of gigantic trade in narcotic grown in Afghanistan [Afghans , Pakistanis, military and ISI are all involved] , with more AK-46s in its frontier regions than pencils to write. The trade also impinges on India and its security as weapons and RDX can be brought in under the cover of narcotics trading in which Indian criminals, security forces and politicians are involved.

US War on Terror is US War for World's Resources

By using words like liberty, freedom and democracy for promoting US interests via Operation Iraqi Freedom for its invasion of Iraq , or Operation Enduring Freedom for bombing of Afghanistan, which often kill civilian and marriage parties than terrorists , US leaders have completely prostituted the meaning of these words. An arrogant Brzezinski blurted the truth about US support to Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, soon after US invasion of Iraq in 2003 ,with unproved and ostensible false charges about WMD s, Iraq's nuclear program and Baghdad's linkage with Al Qaeda ( twice England's greatest non-cricket spinner of truth , Prime Minister Tony Blair ,was told at Moscow media conferences by Russia's President and Foreign Minister that West's allegations and dossiers on Iraq were false .) Soon after the invasion of Iraq ,US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz admitted in Singapore that the allegations were mere bureaucratic excuses , the real objective was Iraq's oil .This was also admitted by this years Economics Nobel Prize winner Krugman and many others. So the so called 'War on terror ' is in truth a non-stop war for control of strategic space and world's energy and other resources.

Failure in Iraq and Stirring Up of More MuslimsUS invasion and occupation of Iraq has been a monumental failure and a quagmire for USA. More than a million Iraqis have been killed , four million refugees are scattered in Syria, Jordan and other countries and in Iraq itself .It has made millions of widows and orphans and is bringing about destruction worse than what Mongols inflicted. Washington's conscious policies have led to ethnic cleansing by Shias and Sunnis .The Arabs and Kurds in Iraq have been divided with little hope of their coming together again , with unforeseen consequences for the region . US Vice President elect Joe Biden had even suggested more than a year ago to formalize the partition in Iraq.

Also over 4200 US soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq, many tens of thousands injured and maimed for life .It has already cost US taxpayer more than five hundred billion dollars. The total cost could reach even three trillion dollars .Only the Military Industry complex has made fortunes .

The killing fields of Iraq have provided on the job training to stirred up Muslims from all over the world, specially Europe, creating a reservoir of trained Jihadis. This development i.e. creation of more terrorists ,has been admitted by Western think tanks and intelligence agencies. So much for fighting terrorism in Iraq .Just the opposite has been accomplished.

State Sponsored Terrorism While Muslims all over the world loathe the policies and terror acts of Israel ,USA,UK in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and other paces, many polls in Europe have graded Israel and US policies and actions as the greatest dangers to world peace and security.

Although Turkey and Israel have very close relations, almost like allies since the creation of the Jewish state , but in 2004 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan publicly described repeatedly Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policies in Occupied Territories accusing Israel as "state terrorism ". Members of his ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), which has Islamic roots, were much harsher and also lambasted US policies in Iraq . An article by Pulitzer Prize winning US journalist Seymour Hersh in New Yorker had disclosed that Israel was fishing in Kurdish north Iraq, south of Turkey's volatile Kurdish region in south-east. Israeli agents were active in Kurdish areas of Iran, Syria and Iraq and providing training to commando units for running covert operations, which could further destabilize the region.

Chris Hedges former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times wrote in Trthdig on 1 December,2008.

" The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when viewed from the receiving end, are state-sponsored acts of terrorism. These wars defy every ethical and legal code that seek to determine when a nation can wage war, from Just War Theory to the statutes of international law largely put into place by the United States after World War II. These wars are criminal wars of aggression. They have left hundreds of thousands of people, who never took up arms against us, dead and seen millions driven from their homes. We have no right as a nation to debate the terms of these occupations. -- The invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were our response to feelings of vulnerability and collective humiliation after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They were a way to exorcise through reciprocal violence what had been done to us.

"Collective humiliation is also the driving force behind al-Qaeda and most terrorist groups. Osama bin Laden cites the Sykes Picot Agreement, which led to the carving up of the Ottoman Empire, as the beginning of Arab humiliation. He attacks the agreement for dividing the Muslim world into "fragments." He rails against the presence of American troops on the soil of his native Saudi Arabia. The dark motivations of Islamic extremists mirror our own.

Robert Pape in "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," found that most suicide bombers are members of communities that feel humiliated by genuine or perceived occupation. Almost every major suicide-terrorist campaign�over 95 percent�carried out attacks to drive out an occupying power. -- Terrorists, many of whom come from the middle class, support acts of indiscriminate violence not because of direct, personal affronts to their dignity, but more often for lofty, abstract ideas of national, ethnic or religious pride and the establishment of a utopian, harmonious world purged of evil. The longer the United States occupies Afghanistan and Iraq, the more these feelings of collective humiliation are aggravated and the greater the number of jihadists willing to attack American targets.

"Terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.--

"The tactic of suicide bombing, equated by many in the United States with Islam, did not arise from the Muslim world. It had its roots in radical Western ideologies, especially Leninism, not religion. And it was the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist group that draws its support from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, who invented the suicide vest for their May 1991 suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi �

"Suicide bombing is what you do when you do not have artillery or planes or missiles and you want to create maximum terror for an occupying power. It was used by secular anarchists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, who bequeathed to us the first version of the car bomb�a horse-drawn wagon laden with explosives that was ignited on Sept. 16, 1920, on Wall Street. The attack was carried out by an Italian immigrant named Mario Buda in protest over the arrest of the anarchists .It left 40 people dead and wounded more than 200.

"Suicide bombing was adopted later by Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Hamas. But even in the Middle East, suicide bombing is not restricted to Muslims. In Lebanon, during the attacks in the 1980s against French, American and Israeli targets, only eight suicide bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were the work of communists and socialists. Christians were responsible for three. "

K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies. Copy right with the author. E-mail: Gajendrak@hotmail.com

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